Cycling pants/shorts of various configurations have become popular because they provide some cushioning between the bicycle seat and the cyclist, and they minimize chafing of the body of the cyclist. Cycling shorts conventionally include an inner pad, or chamois as they are known in the art, located in the crotch and buttocks regions of the cyclist. Shorts and pants are used interchangeably in this application. While some chamois are composed of a number of pieces of flexible material that are stitched together, other chamois are formed of one piece of material. As used in this application flexible generally means pliable or bendable.
One conventional chamois is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,271,101, titled CYCLING SHORTS WITH ANATOMICAL SEAT PAD, issued Dec. 21, 1993, to Septh et al., incorporated herein by reference as if set out in full. The '101 patent provides cycling shorts having a padded, three-layer, seat liner having a plurality of integrally formed and embossed break lines.
While these early chamois provided some improvement and comfort, the early chamois, such as the '101 chamois, still caused irritation to the wearer. To reduce irritation, and provide increased comfort and durability, multiple density chamois were developed. Such multiple density chamois are described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,687,917, titled CHAMOIS FOR CYCLING PANTS AND METHOD OF MAKING, issued Feb. 10, 2004, to Forsyth et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 6,565,702, titled the same, issued May 20, 2003, to Forsyth et al., both of which are incorporated herein by reference. The multiple density chamois provided increased support in the areas where increased support was necessary, and increased pliability where increased pliability was necessary. The multiple density chamois enhanced chamois performance, but still caused irritation to users.
Recently, a trend has begun where the chamois is constructed out of not just one or more density and/or thickness materials, but elastic materials as well. Elastic as used in this application generally means stretchable, unlike the use of the term flexible, which refers to pliable. Using elastic and flexible material allows the chamois to stretch and bend with the user's body tending to reduce irritation.
While using elastic material provided some benefits, the support material tends to breakdown after repeated stretch and retraction of the foam. Thus, it would be desirable to provide a chamois that corrected this and other problems with the prior art.